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Wikileaks regains relevance with Stratfor doc-drop

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Wikileaks has announced a massive document dump of e-mails obtained from Stratfor, which it says demonstrates widespread corruption and even insider trading.

As with its last major document release – the “diplomatic cables” – the organization is working with major press organisations to drip-feed the documents to the public. The five million e-mails to be provided by Wikileaks cover, it claims, everything from informants and payoffs to “payment laundering” techniques.

Wikileaks says the emails also demonstrate the US government’s campaign against it, claiming that the Stratfor documents include “more than 4,000 emails mentioning Wikileaks or Julian Assange”.

If the cables are correct, Stratfor’s informants are paid either through pre-paid credit cards or via Swiss bank accounts. Wikileaks also accuses Stratfor of planning to use its intelligence-gathering to underpin a fund to be known as StratCap.

According to the email excerpted by Wikileaks, StratCap is the brainchild of Shea Morenz (managing director of Goldman Sachs in 2009, when the plan was laid out) and Stratfor CEO George Friedman. The aim of the fund was “to use [Stratfor’s] intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments” (such as, for example, government bonds).